I've been lurking FDS for a long while now, and originally stumbled upon it because of a comment somewhere else saying it was crazy and terrible, the female equivalent of incels and MRA. At first, that was my impression too. At first glance, it seemed to be a lot about how men should spend money on women, how women needed to train and manipulate men, how men were enemies to women's happiness, and all of it was depressing to me. I started regularly rage-reading FDS and being appalled at the views I thought were being expressed. I thought it was awful, that it was teaching women to treat men like enemies, that it was paranoid and unreasonable, demanding of perfection from men. "I don't think of men as enemies", I would think. "Why would I want to date an adversary? I want to date a partner, a friend, a fellow human being navigating life." I even rage-read the entire handbook, shaking my head in disgust. And I kept coming back for the rage.

However, because of my own frustrations with dating and with men as a group, the occasional humorous "men suck" meme would resonate with me. I felt guilty about it, but as a side effect I found that it was helping me keep some perspective, and keeping my standards a little higher. If I had a date with a man and then didn't hear back from him, when I got itchy fingers, I would go read FDS. "Over the top", I'd think, "but it reminds me that he probably sucks and dating is kind of a wash." Eventually I found some of the more serious posts were resonating with me too. And eventually I found it hard to find anything to shake my head at.

I still don't agree with everything here, and not all of it is for me. But what's definitely true and special about this sub is that it puts women's needs, wants, and goals first. Other dating subs may not quite put them last, but regularly those subs will have a "is this sub harsher on men than it is on women" and everyone says yes, and it's just not true. I look back through the posts there and what do I see but story after story after story of women being expected to be mothers and therapists to their sex partners. A recent post I saw was a woman who complained about being bitten by her partner during sex, telling him she didn't like it, and he kept biting her so she left and he was confused. And all the replies say "well did you communicate to him that you didn't like that? He was probably confused about why you just walked out." What is this shit?! What is this standard?! Sure, people will support women who are getting more obviously abused, but general male cluelessness and "soft" manipulation is just the norm and women are expected to baby them through it. It's disgusting.

I've often wanted to comment here but I knew that if it showed up in my profile I'd probably get banned from other dating subs. But I'm done. What I see happening out there is patriarchy cloaked in feminist ally clothing, and I can't take it anymore. Fuck porn, fuck kinks, fuck going dutch, fuck being an econowife to a useless scrote who takes takes takes. No more of this! Thank you for opening my eyes.

Be strong, sisters.